We rode for a little while and then stopped at Säynätsalo town hall by Aalto. It's apparently a big deal, but it was locked up...thankfully it's programmed as part of our Finland West loop in three weeks.
My favorite part was just how the snow hung off the roof line.
It was chilly and I didn't love the building, so got back to the bus early and cheesily took my own picture.
This is part of a library and theater space in a nearby town. I do not remember the name of the city, but it was a lovely building particularly because I think only about 14,000 citizens reside here.
I couldn't believe how scary and big Harry Potter's (and his friends) nose is in Finland.
This is a famous cartoon character in Finland...I should know its name...something like Mumot.
They love having children's spaces in a lot of Finnish public buildings.
The kid space even had their own tower with sky light!
Our final town for Saturday was Kupio which had the building I was most excited to see on our trip. I think I took at least 100 photos of this building, the Mannisto Church by Juha Leiviska. Part of my fascination was simply liking the spaces and being excited to see something in person that I have admired in multiple architecture books and magazines. I am also writing my history paper this semester on Leiviska, so snapping a lot of my own pictures and elements of the building I noticed or enjoyed had scholastic motivation too.
Juha worked with an artist who did some painting in the church. While most of the surfaces are white, some walls and panels have pastel colors on them. In addition to being beautiful and simple in the space, some of this color is placed intentionally to affect the light that Leiviska sees as an architectural material. These images are of the colored panels and reflected light on the nearby white walls.
This parish apparently serves 16,000 registered Lutherans. Hearing this emphasized how different it is to be a member of a church by sending money to it through taxes. The actual structure only seats 600 people when the walls are open, but usually the main sanctuary is intended for less people than that.
I saw these 3d flannograph-type characters! I think it includes the boy with the loaves and fishes, Joseph, Moses's Egyptian "mom", Moses, Mary, and Joseph.
This is the bomb shelter (which is used as a youth room). Each Finnish building of a particular size (even apartment buildings) must, by law, have a bomb shelter which is supposed to keep people safe for 15 days. These facilities are so expensive to build that often they are used for different purposes. Storage is common, but this is not odd either. The only thing about the pool table is that everything extra should be able to be removed from the space very quickly...I'm not so sure this counts.
The light is such a crucial element to this room and it was amazing how much it shifted. It was nice when we first entered, but then we wandered through other rooms for about 15 minutes and came back to this breath taking show of light.
See - I was there!
Our final stop was a relatively recent building by Juhanni Palassmaa (whose office we often get to visit...he's very well known for his architectural writing). We now all have the perception that Juhanni secretly loves color which is not something we would have expected.
Not a great picture, but the reflection was so great with the light levels that I felt the need to play a little.
This is the girls room. I felt like I was girl number 2 in Madeline again with our little beds all in a row. We each sat down and started reading (knitting, in my case) and then found ourselves taking an easy hour nap before meeting up with everyone for dinner at 6:30pm. I had a garlic steak - quite good...but they don't have the same kind of beef here (at least not that I've found so far). Once again the night ended in a bit of dancing - the place we went to seemed to be mostly frequented by high school and very young college students but we had a lot of fun!
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